November 27, 2007

Symptoms:You are using Visual Studio 2008 to upgrade a Visual Studio 2005 ASP.NET project that used Web Service Enhancements 3.0 (WSE 3.0). After upgrading, the secured reference is missing.

Solution:Keep a copy of your old project. After upgrading your project, open the old project in Visual Studio 2005. Select "Show All Files" in Solution Explorer, then drill down into "Web References," then your WSE web reference, then Reference.map and finally into Reference.cs or Reference.vb, depending on your language of choice.There will be two classes in here. The Wse class (which was removed by the VS2008 upgrade) will be at the top of the file. Copy that class into the same file in your VS2008 project.

November 21, 2007

Symptoms:You are running as a limited user on Windows Vista and when you run Visual Studio 2008's installer and approve the UAC prompt, setup either hangs during the .NET Framework 3.5 installation or the installation hangs during setup.

Workaround:Reboot your machine.Log in as an administrator.Install the .NET Framework 3.5 installer by itself.Reboot your machine.Log in as your normal user.Install Visual Studio 2008 as normal.

November 19, 2007

Unlike the PS2 development kits, the PS3 development kits include the development tools now. (They used to cost ~$2,000 a seat additional previously.)

Also, you can now use the test kits for development purposes.

Wow...Sony actually learned from Microsoft on this one. An Xbox development kit costs $10,000, comes with the development tools, and you can compile against a test kit. Say what you will about the hardware, but when it comes to making things developer friendly, Microsoft knocked it out of the park.

Now if they'd just learn from the 360's kernel design, the PS3 might be a bit more attractive.

November 16, 2007

Symptoms: While using Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer or anything that accesses the disk drive on a regular basis, the Windows UI seems to freeze. If Process Explorer is open, you'll notice that Hardware Interrupts are pegged. You can still move your mouse cursor, and at the end of the 10-15 seconds any UI actions that you had started will happen, seemingly all at once.

Hardware:Motherboard with an Intel chipset with integrated RAID support and SATA drives, like most recent Dell Dimension motherboards, but you are not using RAID.

Cause:RAID is enabled on the motherboard. As a result, the RAID version of the chipset driver is loaded.

Solution:(NOTE: This solution involves changing settings in your BIOS. Modifying these settings if you do not know what you are doing could result in your system not being able to boot up. Please do a full backup of your machine prior to attempting this fix.)Reboot your machine.Go into the BIOS settings and look for the RAID settings.Disable them. (On a Dell Dimension, change the motherboard settings from "RAID Autodetect/ACHI" to "SATA/PATA".)Save the modified BIOS settings.Boot into Vista.Go into any profile; new drivers will start installing that require another reboot.Reboot when prompted.

November 15, 2007

I've been trying to stretch my creative muscles more and more lately in an effort to keep myself sharp. Over at Shacknews, they've been having lots of contests lately that have given me a chance to stretch myself with an end goal in mind. One of the more recent ones has involved envisioning game mashups.

November 7, 2007

I'm on record as saying that if I have to deal with media-based copy protection, I want it to be SafeDisc. The 2.x series of SafeDisc was not only the least intrusive series of CD-based copy protection software ever released, but there hasn't been a CD or DVD drive released in the last seven years that has been incompatible with it. It's even had support for it built into Windows XP and beyond.

Eight hundred sixty posts since getting my job at Ritual, in part because of my blog; two hundred sixty posts since losing it. (As a side note, the person I stated that I respected greatly no longer has my respect. Sending me an E-mail within four days of my layoff asking me to stop talking about being laid off because it was bringing negative attention to the company was a really low blow.)

I've been doing this for over three and a half years publicly, and while it hasn't always been the most positive experience, I'm glad that I've done it.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm going to hit 2,000. I'm not even sure that's going to be a target. I'm just going to take it one post at a time. Expect fewer posts overall from here, but higher quality posts when they do show up.

About Me

Currently Sr. Software Engineer in Test at Netflix. Formerly Sr. Quality Engineer on Firefly at Amazon, QA Manager at Ritual Entertainment, Software Test Lead at Microsoft Game Studios, Director of IT for Meeting Professionals International.

Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any current, former, or future employer.